Product Features
- Wii Fit comes with the Wii Balance Board and requires a Wii console to play. Wii console sold separately.
- Wii Fit combines fitness with fun and is designed for everyone, young and old. Wii Fit players work towards personal fitness goals and they block soccer balls, swivel hips to power hoop twirls, and go big on ski jumps to get themselves there.
- Check your daily progress, set goals, check your Wii Fit Age, and even enter exercise time you've done outside of Wii Fit.
- Wii Fit Age is measured by factoring the user's BMI reading, testing the user's center of gravity and conducting quick balance tests.
- Training is at the core of Wii Fit. You can spend as much (or as little) time as you want trying out all of the 40+ activities Wii Fit offers.
Product Details
- Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
- ASIN: B000VJRU44
- Product Dimensions: 10 pounds
- Media: Video Game
- Release Date: May 21, 2008
Product Description
The active-play phenomenon started by Wii Sports now spreads to your whole body thanks to Wii Fit and the pressure-sensitive Wii Balance Board, which comes bundled with it. Used together players will experience an extensive array of fun, dynamic and surprisingly challenging activities, including aerobics, yoga, muscle stretches and balance oriented games. The focus of these activities is towards providing a "core" workout, a popular exercise method that emphasizes slower, controlled motions, but it's the fun approach to fitness of Wii Fit that will keep players hooked on fitness for years to come.
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The Wii Fit Balance Board
The primary tenet of Wii Fit is balance. Your center of balance, the point between your left and right sides when you stand upright, has a lot to do with your health. Those without an even center of balance will be unnaturally compensating for this imbalance, which causes their posture to become misaligned, increasing the possibility of putting unnecessary strain on their bodies. This is where the Wii Balance Board comes in.
Similar in appearance to a step aerobics board, the Wii Balance Board is much, much more. Easily capable of supporting weights up to a maximum of 300 pounds, it is sturdy and precise, able to measure weight and register pressure accurately when placed on a variety of flat surfaces. This advanced level of sensitivity allows for both the wide range of activities found in the Wii Fit software as well as the board's amazing ability recognize individual players by their weight alone.
Getting Started: Create a Profile
Before you jump into doing exercises and activities, you’ll start by creating a profile. This is done easily and intuitively by simply choosing a Mii, entering your height and age information, and doing a few quick tests that will serve as a baseline for your new Wii fitness regimen. These tests are:
- BMI Check: BMI, or Body Mass Index, is a measure of body fat based on height and weight that is the standard used by agencies such as the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Health. To check your BMI, you’ll enter your height then stand on the Wii Balance Board and let it read your weight.
- Wii Fit Age: After you’ve checked your BMI, you’ll do a basic balance test and find out your current Wii Fit Age. This basic balance test measures how well you can control your left and right balance. Based on the results, you’ll be assigned a Wii Fit Age.
Four Categories of Fun
Once you have created your profile it's time to have some fun. Wii Fit features four main categories of exercises to choose from: Strength Training, Aerobics, Yoga and Balance Games. Wii Fit will guide you through the first three with the help of your own virtual personal trainer, while the balance games offer variety and fun to help keep you engaged and excited about your fitness goals. In addition, as you spend time exercising, you’ll earn Fit Credits that unlock additional exercises and activities within your favorite categories that will allow you to continue to push yourself. See more detail on the four categories below:
- Strength Training: Put your strength to the test with muscle-toning exercises like Single Leg Extension, Sideways Leg Lift, Arm and Leg Lift, Single-Arm Stand, Torso Twists, Rowing Squat, Single Leg Twist, Lunge, Push-Up and Side Plank, Jackknife, Plank and Tricep Extension. Challenges include Push-Up Challenge, Plank Challenge and Jackknife Challenge.
- Aerobics: Get your heart pumping with fun, interactive Aerobic exercises like Hula Hoop, Basic Step, Basic Run, Super Hula Hoop, Advanced Step, 2-P Run, Rhythm Boxing, Free Step and Free Run.
- Yoga: Work on your balance and flexibility with Yoga poses and activities like Deep Breathing, Half-Moon, Dance, Cobra, Bridge, Spinal Twist, Shoulder Stand, Warrior, Tree, Sun Salutation, Standing Knee, Palm Tree, Chair, Triangle and Downward-Facing Dog.
- Balance Games: Get into the action with fun, balanced-based games like Soccer Heading, Ski Slalom, Ski Jump, Table Tilt, Tightrope Walk, Balance Bubble, Penguin Slide, Snowboard Slalom and Lotus Focus.
Keep Track of Your Progress
Because keeping fit is an ongoing process, Wii Fit also tracks the activities you do the most and puts them into your Favorites category. With this information players can note exercises and activities that they are strong in, as well as others that may need to improve at. Some of the ways players can use this information for are to:
- Keep tabs on your daily progress with easy-to-understand graphs and charts. Using your personal profile, you can set goals, view a graph of your BMI results over time, see how many Fit Credits you’ve earned, check your Wii Fit Age and even enter exercise time you’ve done outside of Wii Fit. It’s all about coming back and exercising a little every day, and the personal profile makes tracking your daily progress simple and easy.
- Quickly check your Wii Fit Age and BMI without even putting the game in the console by going directly to the Wii Fit Channel.
- Allow up to eight family members can create their own profiles in Wii Fit. On the profile-selection screen, everyone in the family can see each other’s recent BMI progress and Fit Credit total. This will allow families to have a friendly competition to exercise and get fit.
Video Game Review by 1UP.com (What's this?)
By Jennifer Tsao -- 12/5/2008
That's mostly how Wii Fit is. The yoga and strength training aren't really even games; you just follow along with a trainer, working out in the world's most lifeless, depressing gym. Certainly, lunges and leg lifts are great for developing muscle strength -- and if you can successfully hold plank poses the way your trainer does, you're sure to burn off at least a few of those Mario-themed cupcakes you inhaled last night at dinner.
But measuring success is one of Wii Fit's shortcomings. While the Balance Board (the game's packed-in peripheral, which is a bit bigger than a bathroom scale) seems to sense -- quite precisely -- your center of balance and how hard you're pushing, it's sometimes tough to tell whether the game is praising you for performing the exercise right, or doing so just because you managed to keep your heel or toe dug in particularly well on a given move. It certainly lets you know when you're doing something horribly wrong (for example, if you put the wrong leg down because you lost balance), but Wii Fit's definition of "right" feels a bit more vague.
Still, for people who don't exercise (or haven't in a very, very long time), the game's suite of yoga poses -- ranging from very simple bends and stretches to more advanced, challenging fare such as the warrior pose and sun salutation -- serve as a wonderful introduction to the healthy practice. And for the honest gamer looking to get fit (and not "game" the Board's sensitivity), the strength training offers a genuine workout that you won't get from any other videogame. The feedback Wii Fit gives you via its unique controller is unlike anything I've seen, and I've played a few dancepad- and EyeToy-based exercise games in my time.
For pure entertainment, the aerobic- and balance-based minigames (dancing, skiing, etc.) are much more fun and lively. Snowboarding feels real...and once you get the hang of hula-hooping, it gets the heart pumping and makes you look completely ridiculous (always a bonus in my book). Some of the minigames are as great as anything you'll play in Wii Sports, with one notable caveat: Wii Fit doesn't do a whole lot with multiplayer. Obviously, it's unrealistic to expect one household to have multiple Balance Boards, so multiplayer is limited to a jogging minigame, which doesn't even use the board (you put the Wii Remote in your pocket and run in place). Despite that understandable rationale, it's a damn shame that Nintendo didn't incorporate better multiplayer support, which could've made it legitimately more fun for the whole family to exercise together.
All activities in Wii Fit award Fit Credits, which unlock more exercises and minigames. And this unlocking mechanic -- combined with the fact that the game ranks all the players on your Wii on the same leaderboard -- helps motivate you to keep playing. I found myself particularly addicted to certain games (the one where you head soccer balls while avoiding other flying objects, and another where your Mii is in a bubble, trying to navigate along a twisty river), trying to earn more Fit Credits and improve my score (and beat my housemates). Unlocking a new difficulty level or length of exercises ("Woo-hoo, now I can do 20 reps instead of 10!") isn't quite as rewarding, but earning credits to open up new minigames feels fantastic.
For an exercise game, Wii Fit gives you a surprising amount of freedom -- and that's not always a good thing. Yes, you're supposed to weigh yourself each day and test your core muscles to gauge overall progress. And, yes, the game keeps a chart of your weight loss (or gain, as was the case with me) and body mass index trends. But while the Mii integration is positively brilliant -- it scales your Mii relatively fatter or thinner based on your actual stats -- this modicum of structure isn't likely to keep couch potatoes from slacking. I wanted more regulation, more guidance, more demands. When you have complete freedom to choose what you want to do, you might find yourself cheating, despite your best intentions. I mean, c'mon -- this is a workout game. I self-motivated on plenty of challenging activities (running in place, lunges), yet I still found myself doing lots of simple yoga poses and rudimentary calisthenics to unlock more stuff with minimal effort. I guess I'd hoped an exercise videogame would make fitness a lot more fun -- and easier to do. And, though it doesn't quite exceed those expectations, Wii Fit will get you moving -- especially if you're looking for a gentle, fun introduction to an exercise program.
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